Detroit’s $1,000 houses may be a lousy deal

This came up in a HousingWire conversation recently – have an extra $1,000 in your PayPal account? You can own a home in Detroit. At a sell price that’s almost literally $1 per square foot, it still may be a raw deal.

For Sale: A spacious 1,600-square-foot, three-bedroom Tudor-style home built in 1929, with one-and-a-half baths, glass block windows, hardwood floors, crown molding and custom fireplaces. Within walking distance of restaurants, playgrounds and public schools.

And it’s being offered next month for as little as $1,000.

Just one catch. The single-family house on 5500 Kensington Ave. has a zip code that makes listing agents wake up in cold sweats: 48224.

For the uninitiated, that’s the center of Wayne County, Michigan. Otherwise known as Detroit.

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Trey Garrison was a Senior Financial Reporter for HousingWire.com. Trey served as real estate editor for the Dallas Business Journal, and was one of the founding editors of D CEO Magazine. He has been an editor for D Magazine — considered among the best city magazines in the United States — and a contributor for Reason magazine.

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